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Probably a good idea.

1 (16.7%)

Not really necessary.

2 (33.3%)

I don't play Berserker so I don't really have an opinion.

3 (50%)

Total Members Voted: 6

[Lenglon]

Lenglon is confused and doesn't even know what breaking point Stirk is referring to but has nothing helpful to add.

[Smoke Mirrors]

I actually did expect Doc to win, and I think he might have if it wasn’t for the failed strength roll right at the end, and especially that crit. I do think you’re right about me needing to change how critical rolls work, at least for enemies. A thought is to keep it the same for PCs and change it for enemies to require a particularly low roll or something, such as a total below 4.

Adding the element of surprise was a mistake in this round as, as I stated, enemies in the actual game will tend to be the ones who get to choose the situation of the battle, so I wanted to reflect that, but on the same token, you’ll probably have them outnumbered in those battles, so trying to reflect that in a one on one just made it harder for you guys.

[BlackPaladin99]

keep running away

[Stirk]

I actually did expect Doc to win, and I think he might have if it wasn’t for the failed strength roll right at the end, and especially that crit. I do think you’re right about me needing to change how critical rolls work, at least for enemies. A thought is to keep it the same for PCs and change it for enemies to require a particularly low roll or something, such as a total below 4.

Adding the element of surprise was a mistake in this round as, as I stated, enemies in the actual game will tend to be the ones who get to choose the situation of the battle, so I wanted to reflect that, but on the same token, you’ll probably have them outnumbered in those battles, so trying to reflect that in a one on one just made it harder for you guys.

You say that like the game is actually going to start at some point

[Smoke Mirrors]

It will, and the issues we keep finding is a clear indication of why it hasn’t yet.

[Lenglon]

You mentioned that enemies are likely to get to determine the situation of combat, which seems odd to me offhand. Generally one party is the aggressor and the other the defender, at least initially, and each of them gets to set the stage in certain ways. the defender generally has control and knowledge of the location of the fight, and can manipulate it to favor themselves if they so choose. the aggressor generally has control of the timing of the fight, and often gets first-move advantage. This last test-fight was an oddity because we had neither control of the location nor the timing. For example in Irine's fight, she didn't know where she was, didn't have a fallback position to run to, didn't know who she was likely to meet, what kind of terrain she was in, and so on. So she didn't have the traditional defender's advantages, having effectively been teleported to her location. however she also didn't have the traditional aggressor's advantages, she didn't know if those she met were hostile, she didn't get to take her time and observe her opponent before they fought, she didn't have a fallback area or battle plan in general, and so on. So environmentally we were in a worst-of-both-worlds kind of situation, one that I don't see happening in a fully-functioning world.

[Smoke Mirrors]

You are correct, I over simplified it. Think of the situation as similar to how things tend to work in GO, with you guys entering into an enemy controlled area, sometimes having a base if operations, but generally acting as as the attackers, going to the enemy area to attack them, meaning they have terrain advantage. The mistake I made in this situation was treating it as a situation where you entered an enemy’s territory without giving you the advantage an attacker normally has, essentially having you just having stumbled into enemy territory without knowledge, which is a possible thing that could happen in game, but would generally be a battle you are intended to run from, and in this case I didn’t give you the option.

[Failbird105]

John Henry
Henry narrows his eyes at the girl and hefts his hammer.

"I don't know what you're aiming for here little miss, but this rail line ain't stopping for nobody!"

Single-mindedness targets enemy Servant, rush her down and bring down the hammer.

[Smoke Mirrors]

Nuada (1 Turn Cooldown)
Nuada Gains 10 Mana (Now 30)
Agility Check: 4 (Success), 5 (No Crit), Remainder 4
?? Agility Check: 1 (Success), 8 (Crit Success), Remainder 4
?? Agility Check: 6 (Success), 5 (Crit Success), Remainder 7 vs 2 (Success), 8 (No Crit), Remainder 6
Damage Check: 7 (Success), Remainder 1 vs 5 (Success), Remainder 1
Nuada Loses 20 Mana (Now 10)

Nuada continued to try running from his enemy, charging deeper into the woods, but it seems that not only is his opponent faster than him, but they possess a greater understanding of the terrain. By the time he’d gotten away, his opponent had already caught up to him.

Another dagger flew out of the trees, digging into Nuada’s fleshy arm. He tugged it out, and his mana got to work fixing the injury, but his mana was already strained with all his other dagger wounds, major and minor. He wasn’t going to be able to keep going much longer.

John Henry
John Henry Targets ?+?
Strength Check: 10 (Success), 10 (No Crit), Remainder 6 vs 10 (Failure)
Damage Check: 5 (Success), 7 (Crit Success) (2x), Remainder 4 vs 3 (Success), 3 (Crit Success), Remainder 7
?+? Loses 20 Mana (Now 130)
John Henry Loses 10 Mana (Now 77)
Ghost 1 Agility Check: 8 (Success), 1 (Crit Success), Remainder 1 vs 6 (Success), 5 (No Crit), Remainder 3
Damage Check: 2 (Success), 2 (Crit Success) (2x), Remainder 6 vs 10 (Success), 10 (No Crit), Remainder 3
John Henry Loses 30 Mana (Now 47)
Ghost 2 Agility Check: 4 (Success), 9 (No Crit), Remainder 6 vs 8 (Success), Remainder 1
Damage Check: 6 (Success), 1 (Crit Success), Remainder 3 vs 7 (Success), 1 (Crit Success), Remainder 5
John Henry Loses 8 Mana (Now 39)
Ghost 3 Agility Check: 1 (Success), 3 (Crit Success) (1.5x), Remainder 6 vs 6 (Success), 3 (No Crit), Remainder 3
Damage Check: 9 (Success), Remainder 1 vs 1 (Success), 2 (Crit Success)
John Henry Loses 12 Mana (Now 27)
?+? Agility Check: 7 (Failure)

If John Henry knew how to do anything, it was to focus on the task at hand and not let anything distract him. This was no different. He could tell whoever the blond girl was, she was the cause of all of this, so if he took her out, that might take care of the ghosts. He narrowed his eyes at her and raised his hammer.

"I don't know what you're aiming for here little miss, but this rail line ain't stopping for nobody!"

He charged forward, running through the attacking ghosts and the changed battlefield, taking cuts and scrapes from the ghosts, as he brought down his hammer on the girl. Unfortunately for John Henry, it was almost as though the air around him was working against him, forcibly slowing his hammer down to dampen the damage the girl would take from his strike, which ended up slamming into her shoulder, but with much less force than intended.

However, it may not have been a great idea on John Henry’s part to ignore the ghosts, as some of the scratches they had landed on him were rather severe, with one ghost having managed to stick it’s claws into a large area of John Henry;s body that had remained flesh. Even the smaller cuts added up to some significant damage.
It looks like this round might end up all losses, which is once more my fault.

[Failbird105]

John Henry

Swing again


Honestly, I think a big problem is just that, like I said before we even started, a d10 is way too small. I get that the intent was to make Servants feel powerful, like they rarely ever fail, but the problem is that it feels like... pretty much everything else feels that powerful too. Increase the Roll Under Number for Servant and Rank 4+ unit Parameters instead maybe. As it is it feels like even the most basic mook enemies are still fighting only moderately worse than the Servants are, which ends up making the Servants feel weak instead.

[Lenglon]

This is why we test. No need to worry over imbalanced encounters when you're testing combat to see what's balanced. Just go "okay, so X is strong / Y is weak" and adjust.

Frankly, I'm surprised and impressed that you're bothering to have so much flavor and environment in combat tests.

[Smoke Mirrors]

Honestly, I think a big problem is just that, like I said before we even started, a d10 is way too small. I get that the intent was to make Servants feel powerful, like they rarely ever fail, but the problem is that it feels like... pretty much everything else feels that powerful too. Increase the Roll Under Number for Servant and Rank 4+ unit Parameters instead maybe. As it is it feels like even the most basic mook enemies are still fighting only moderately worse than the Servants are, which ends up making the Servants feel weak instead.

I think part of the issue is a desire to balance the difficulty to make the game still challenging enough to be fun, but not enough that it's too hard to play. For instance, I think that the Dragon Tooth Warriors, who are meant to be the basic mook units, were weak enough to not need to be weakened further. They certainly seemed to be at their intended level of "weak enough to kill multiple of without taking too much damage yourself". Eresh's ghost mobs are a bit different, as while they are mook level units, Eresh is kind of designed as a minion controller type character who buffs her allies, such as the ghosts. I also tested out the "need to roll 4 or less to crit" setting for the enemies, but given two ghosts got that, I think I need to decrease it further, maybe only works if they roll 1s or 2s? Were the wyvern units too powerful?

You're suggesting increasing all the roll under numbers for servants and 4+ enemies to maybe what they'd be at +, such as an A being 15 rather than 10? Or maybe just double everything and use a D20 instead? That would double the failure rate of things below A, which might make high stats feel more powerful, and should decrease the chance of crits.

Regardless, while Round 3 looks like it's wrapping up soon, I think I might do a Round 3.5, either rolling for new enemies or keeping these ones, but reshuffling who they fight, and treating you guys as the attacking force, so giving you info on who you're going after and the element of surprise, to make a more accurate version on 1v1 testing for servant combat.

Frankly, I'm surprised and impressed that you're bothering to have so much flavor and environment in combat tests.

One part of it is that I want to make this game a realistic simulation of the eventual game, which will have writing like this so I should give myself the expectation of what writing updates will be like and not cheap out because it's only a test, another is to make it more engaging for players, as just looking at the numbers would get really boring after a while, and the last part is that I legitimately enjoy writing, though I often can't make myself sit down and write for a long time, so doing short little bits for each turn is enjoyable. You can tell what parts I enjoyed doing more due to them generally being longer and more detailed.

[Smoke Mirrors]

So, an idea has been proposed and discussed for the matter of making servants stronger and mooks weaker. When I was designing enemy ranks, I did it by giving them different amounts of points to spend on stats and passive abilities, but it was suggested that instead, everyone has the same 22 points, but, along with changing the dice from D10 to D20, the effect of ranks is how large the roll under number provided by the points is.

For Non-Servants
1: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10
2: 2, 5, 8, 10, 12
3: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15
4: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20
5: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25

For Servants
1: 2, 5, 8, 10, 12
2: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15
3: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20
4: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25
5: 6, 12, 18, 24, 30

This will make mook level enemies weaker, make crits rarer (I think), and fix an issue I had where at a certain point high ranking enemies just had flat A rank stats and I had no idea what to do with the extra points.

EDIT: If anyone is wondering, I'm not going to require redoing testing against rank 1 and 2 enemies due to this, I'll just try them again in the teams round.

[Smoke Mirrors]

John Henry
Strength Check: 2 (Success), 8 (Crit Success), Remainder 6 vs 4 (Failure)
Damage Check: 9 (Success), 2 (Crit Success) (2x), Remainder 5 vs 2 (Success), 1 (Crit Success), Remainder 10
?+? Loses 30 Mana (Now 80)
John Henry Loses 10 Mana (Now 17)
Ghost 1 Agility Check: 8 (Success), 4 (No Crit), Remainder 2 vs 7 (Success), 4 (No Crit), Remainder 2 (Coin Flip: Heads)
Ghost 2 Agility Check: 2 (Success), 3 (Crit Success), Remainder 5 vs 10 (Failure)
Damage Check: 8 (Success), 6 (No Crit), Remainder 2 vs 2 (Success), 3 (Crit Success), Remainder 8
John Henry Loses 8 Mana (Now 9)
Ghost 3 Agility Check: 2 (Success), 7 (Crit Success), Remainder 1 vs 4 (Success), 4 (Crit Success), Remainder 1 (Coin Flip: Tails)
Damage Check: 9 (Success), Remainder 1 vs 10 (Success), 9 (No Crit)
John Henry Loses 15 Mana (Now 0)
Battle Continuation D Activates
John Henry’s Mana is now 10
?+? Strength Check: 3 (Success), 1 (Crit Success), Remainder 6 vs 9 (Success), 9 (No Crit), Remainder 5
Damage Check: 1 (Success), 7 (Crit Success), Remainder 2 vs 10 (Success), 1 (Crit Success)
John Henry Loses 23 Mana (Now Dead)

John Henry swung again, ignoring the ghosts ripping at his flesh and steel, ignoring the wind fighting against him, just pushing forward, giving every last inch of himself to his task, steam whistles shrieking, engines blazing, sweat dripping from his brow.

He pushed his hammer through the air at full force, trying with all his might to hit the girl standing before him. Even as the air pushed his strike back, his hammer connected with the crown of the girl’s head. While the force was cut down, he could see that his strike had still managed to draw blood, and the girl’s face turned to a pained grimace.

The attacks he’d sustained from the ghosts should have killed him by now, but John Henry wasn’t one to die with a task still to do. By shear force of will he kept his spirit origin together, readying himself for another strike, but the girl still hadn’t attacked. She swung her giant weapon faster than a girl her size should be able to move something that big, swiping at John Henry’s chest. Weakened already by the onslaught of the ghosts, the attack cut through his chest, striking his already damaged spirit origin, providing the last push it needed to shatter, as John Henry dissolved into sparks of golden light.

I'll start using the d20 and Ranked roll under numbers starting next round, but I'll finish this round up with the current system. I'm working on some stuff for the servants you'll be up against in 1.3.5, so it may not start right away when this round ends.

EDIT: I completely forgot John Henry had Battle Continuation D, so he's not out yet, or at least not due to that attack. It's late here so I don't have time to edit the turn right now, but I'll fix it tomorrow.

EDIT 2: Fixed. Unfortunately he still didn't survive the round.

[BlackPaladin99]

surrender